by Cole McCade
My shoulders popped and cracked as I rowed out to my boat, named the June Marie. I’d bought it from a man who had named it for his wife and daughter, as many did, and I hadn’t been able to come up with a better name, so I kept it. Maybe one of these days I’d change it to something like the Salty Bitch, but then that would mean I was staying here and the boat was mine and this was my life now. I didn’t want this to be my life. I used to picture my life in so many different ways, and now it was a blank. I was stuck, but I couldn’t find the way forward. I wanted to dream again. I just didn’t know how. Back in the day, I’d planned on getting my MBA and then opening a coffee shop or a greenhouse or a bar. I didn’t know what my business would be. I just knew that I wanted to work for myself, and that seemed like the way to do it. I’d been young and naïve then.
The June Marie roared to life and I steered it out of the harbor. The first few days like this on the water had been spent acclimating to the waves and the up-and-down motion of the boat, but somehow, my body had stopped fighting it and I wasn’t puking over the side while trying not to hit a buoy or a seal.
I always played music on the boat, so I turned on my favorite playlist. Lizzo blasted from the small speakers I’d rigged up in the cabin. It was cold as fuck today, so I wrapped myself up and sucked down half of my thermos of coffee as the sun rose. The forecast was for temps in the eighties later, a rarity for Maine. Right now the air was downright frosty. That wasn’t something I had bargained on when I started. I’d learned a lot since then. A bunch of the guys I’d hung out with in high school had worked for their dads, and I’d helped out once or twice, so I wasn’t completely new to fishing. I’d still had to fumble my way through at first.
I reached my first buoy, which was painted white with a black stripe around the middle. I hadn’t been very creative there, I had to admit. I set about the nasty job of throwing bait into bags to re-bait the trap, and then the business of hauling the trap up from the ocean floor. If I wasn’t such a small operation (only fifty traps), I might have had help in the form of a sternman, but then I would have had to talk to someone, and that would have been the worst. I’d rather curse and struggle and take longer doing things on my own than hire someone else. Plus, I’d have to pay them and I was barely making it work as it was. At least I didn’t have to pay a mortgage.
I lost myself in the rhythm of my work: bait, haul trap, pull out lobsters, measure, rubber band, re-bait, toss back in ocean.
By the time most people were getting up for work, I was almost halfway through my traps for the day. I had two rotations and alternated them every other day. My body had grown used to the physical work, but I would never get used to the smell of bait and diesel. No amount of showers seemed to remove the smell. Guess that was another bonus of having a sternman: someone else got to do the stinky jobs.
I had a decent haul and headed back to the lobster pound, where they’d buy the lobsters right from the boat, boil them in the restaurant upstairs, and serve them all in the same day. I also threw a few in a cooler on the back of the bike for myself, since it was cheaper than buying organic chicken at the grocery store.
I hosed myself off near the dock and decided to head home instead of hanging out to shoot the shit with the other lobstermen. Sometimes I lurked and they let me hang on the edges of their conversations, listening but not contributing. They didn’t seem to mind, since we were all in the trenches together. I could have joined if I wanted to, but I’d never tried and the longer I didn’t try, the harder it became.
I stopped quickly to fuel up the bike and grab a fresh-baked croissant and another huge black coffee at the only gas station in town. It was also a variety store, stocking everything from guns to gummies to wedding gowns. Seriously. I didn’t know who was buying said gowns, but they had them anyway.
The lobsters went into the fridge out back before I stripped completely and ran for the shower. I honestly didn’t care if the neighbors saw me dashing through the house after I abandoned my clothes in the doorway. I didn’t used to, anyway. Maybe now I should care a little bit about a certain neighbor seeing me completely naked. No, I wasn’t going to think about that. I wasn’t going to think anything. I was just going to close my eyes and try and wash off the smell of dead fish guts and also not think about anything at all. Nothing. I wanted to think nothing.
I wanted to be nothing.
Don’t miss Girl Next Door by Chelsea M. Cameron,
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Copyright © 2020 Chelsea M. Cameron
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ISBN-13: 9781488076299
Just Like That
Copyright © 2020 by Cole McCade
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
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